JOY ALONG THE WAY: HOLLY-IZING THE COOKIE TINS AGAIN

Christmas gift wrapping paper, ribbons, boxes, tin and plastic containers add so much to the holiday atmosphere. The paper, ribbons and boxes add to the trash bags afterward, but who can throw away the pretty tin cans or plastic containers? Gifted artists have decorated them with every seasonal thing imaginable. Currier and Ives and George H. Durrie's winter scenes are popular too. Their pictures make you want to get out on an icy pond and skate with friends or take a ride through the winter countryside in a sleigh drawn by jingle-belled horses.

I'm still looking for a cookie tin whose all-over design is the old fashioned holly. Never having found one, I made one myself several years ago and since then have six more. I'm going to make another one this year. Maybe two or three.

Mod Podge is still on the market in some art supply stores. I start with a small jar of that sticky white substance. Then I bring out the cans or containers I've saved. One pound coffee cans are a nice size. After I've searched the stores for, or am lucky enough to get a gift wrapped in holly paper, I cut a strip of it long enough to go around the can and lap over a tad and exactly wide enough so that it does not cover the little ridges at the top and bottom of the can; otherwise the lid will soon make the paper ragged at the top.

Then I smear the outside of the can with Mod Podge, except or the little ridges (this, too, is important) and wrap the chosen paper around it, smoothing out the wrinkles. Rubber cement would do for this if preferred, but the Mod Podge is necessary to smooth over the outside of the paper when it has been glued on and allowed to dry. It gives the paper a shiny, washable coat.

Anyone remember Mrs. Roberts, the avid gardener? She once gave me a sheet of blue holly paper -- leaves all blue with white berries. I understood it to be very old. I've never seen any before or since.

So I have a blue holly can, three conventional green and red holly cans, though with different sized leaves, and one with a gold background rather than the usual white.

I've given many of these cans away at Christmastime, filled with candy, cookies, assorted spices, caramel corn, etc., although these give-away cans may have been covered with other kinds of Christmas paper, some even more glittery and fancy than my holly ones. I reserve the hollies for myself.

During the first eleven months of the year I seldom see the holly cans. They're way back on some cabinet shelf, but at the holiday season, there they are, on my open kitchen shelf, filled with red-hots, chocolate chips, nuts, brown sugar, etc. All necessary stuff to make proper Christmas goodies.

The row of homemade holiday containers adds to the holiday atmosphere of the kitchen and spurs happy memories. There is, of course, the Mrs. Roberts can, the Thomza Zimmerman can, the Lora and Margaret cans, etc.

Wha~t! Is this the Depression days all over again? No. We didn't buy that much coffee then and Christmas wrapping paper was mostly white tissue.

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and a longtime columnist of the Southeast Missourian.